THE ISSUE: Victims of the illicit sex trade say they are often lured into the industry by manipulative and violent traffickers, then face major challenges when trying to leave.

THE IMPACT: Survivors of sex trafficking say they are often left with psychological trauma, drug addictions, a lack of education, a criminal record and few job prospects.

Gerry Tuoti Wicked Local Newsbank Editor

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of stories exploring human trafficking in Massachusetts. The series will delve into the widespread commercial sex trade in our cities and suburbs, the online marketplaces where pimps and johns buy and sell sex, cases of modern-day slavery and victims’ tales of survival.

Often lured or forced into the commercial sex trade as young teens, women who manage to leave that life are confronted with a host of major obstacles.

“You’ve been taken out of school. You don’t have a diploma,” said Cheri Crider, who escaped from her sex traffickers 37 years ago and now works as the office manager at Amirah, a North Shore safe house for sex trafficking victims. “They take your IDs away and you can’t even prove you’re an American citizen. How are you going to go to school? How are you going to get a job? How are you going to rent an apartment? You have no job experience, so you have nothing to put on a resume. You have no references, because you’ve been taken away from all your family support. Those are huge obstacles for girls getting out.”

Victim advocates have tried in recent years to reshape the popular dialogue surrounding the commercial sex trade. Rejecting the thought that prostitution is a victimless crime, they say the overwhelming majority of sex workers are coerced or psychologically manipulated by a pimp or trafficker into selling their bodies.

“There’s a lack of knowledge or desire for knowledge in society,” said state Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, the lawmaker behind the state’s 2011 human trafficking law. “It’s easier for people to think of them as delinquents and prostitutes rather than enslaved, trafficked, human beings.”

So who are the victims of sex trafficking in Massachusetts? In some cases, they have been foreign nationals forced into performing sex acts at massage parlors that act as fronts for brothels. Multiple Asian massage parlors in Massachusetts have been busted in prostitution and sex trafficking investigations in recent years.

But the majority of the time, victims of sex trafficking turn out to be women and girls from the local community.

“Part of what we’re trying to get people to understand is that this is actually much more of a homegrown problem involving 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds growing up in suburban or rural Massachusetts, in our cities, who are specifically targeted then brought in by someone posing as a boyfriend who turns out to be a trafficker, a pimp,” said Attorney General Maura Healey. “Victims of human trafficking are not Asian women solely. Get that out of people’s heads.”

Millis resident Joli Sparkman said she was first drawn into the sex trade while a teenager with a rocky home life in Rochester, New York. The owner of a pizza parlor, she said, befriended her and began giving her free food and gifts. After a time, he began manipulating her to perform favors for him in return. He eventually coerced her into dancing for his friends. From there, things spiraled further out of control, and the teenager found herself coerced into posing for nude photographs, then eventually sleeping with men for money, which her trafficker kept.

“I felt dead. I felt empty,” she said. “I just wanted to die.”

Pimps and traffickers, experts say, often prey on young women, and sometimes boys, who have a vulnerability that can be exploited. They then begin a process of grooming the victim, isolating him or her from friends and families.

“The kids we serve are, for the most part, the most vulnerable in our communities,” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace, executive director of Boston-based My Life My Choice, which works with young women who have been victims of sex trafficking. “While this could happen to any child … the vast majority of the kids have already experienced abuse and neglect well before entering the commercial sex industry. They’re often hungry for unconditional love and acceptance and belonging. An exploiter can prey on that desire.”

It’s very common for young trafficking victims to be lured in by a boyfriend, who isolates them, manipulates them and controls nearly every aspect of their lives to make them dependent on him.

“It’s a very complicated mixture of love and fear,” Goldblatt Grace said. “This person is usually incredibly violent. It’s complicated by this person frequently saying they love them.”

The women who have received services from My Life My Choice report, on average, that they began performing sex acts for money at age 14.

Many advocates say specialized services for male victims, a traditionally overlooked population, are also needed.

“From a global cultural perspective, we perceive men to be perpetrators and women to be victims,” said Steven Procopio, a social worker and consultant who runs trainings and educational programs about male victims of sex trafficking.

Male victims, he said, may be even more reluctant than female victims to come forward.

“In some circumstances, there’s too much shame and guilt from a sexism and homophobia dynamic,” he said.

Amirah, one of four New England safe homes for trafficked women, is among the organizations that help female victims rebuild their lives. When women are referred to Amirah, they typically enter an initial 30-day residential program and are connected to mental, social, emotional, medical and vocational services. Following the initial 30-day program, most women stay at Amirah for two years.

Victims, Amirah Director Stephanie Clark said, often have deep emotional and psychological trauma. Most are also addicted to drugs, particularly heroin. In some cases, the women are addicted before entering the sex trade. In other cases, they begin using opioids while being trafficked as a way to cope with the emotional pain.

“What we see in our population is a woman in her 20s or 30s who is trafficked for a period of time, then ran away, is picked up for drugs or is picked up for prostituting herself because she doesn’t know how else to make money,” Clark said. “It takes, on average, seven times for a woman to break out of that cycle. They end up getting sucked back in due to huge challenges they face in finding a job, finding trustworthy relationships, and because of the abuse they’ve suffered.”

While there are more resources for victims than there used to be, advocates say even more are needed. Montigny has called for allocating money for a victim services trust fund. He has also sponsored bills intended to strengthen to 2011 state law. His new proposals, which were discussed at a July 18 hearing at the Statehouse, include new public awareness campaigns, as well as training to help law enforcement and medical staff recognize the signs of human trafficking. One bill would vacate trafficking victims’ convictions for nonviolent misdemeanor crimes committed as a result of being trafficked.

“You cannot get these people back into productive lives if you do not give them a path from victim to survivor,” he said, explaining that a criminal record often makes it hard for people to get housing, jobs or access to credit.

Crider, the office manager at Amirah, said she hopes to one day work as a mentor to young women trying to escape the sex trade. She’s encouraged that there are now resources available to help sexually exploited people rebuild their lives.

“When I got out, there were no programs,” she said. “There were no safe houses. We didn’t even have the term human trafficking. I lived with the lie of what they told me I was. I believed it was my choice. That’s the coercion they use. That’s the manipulation.”

Sex trade survivor finds comfort in writing

No little girl grows up dreaming of selling her body, said Jasmine Marino, a survivor of sex trafficking.

For the Saugus woman, rereading a journal she kept while working in the commercial sex trade provided insight into her own dark journey. Looking back at her former life, Marino retraced her path and began the therapeutic exercise of writing reflections on each of her old journal entries. Last year, she self-published the collection as “The Diary of Jasmine Grace.”

When Marino got lured into what she calls “the life” at age 19, she was drawn in by a boyfriend she’d recently started dating. He showered her with gifts and sold her on a dream of money and success. He then convinced her that if she’d perform sex acts in massage parlors and hotel rooms, they could make a lot of money.

“When you’re in it and making a ton of money and driving in a Mercedes-Benz, it gives you a false sense of power and security,” she said. “You make yourself think this is what I want to do, but it produces a lot of trauma and a lot of damage.”

The truth, Marino said, was she felt dirty and ashamed. Her boyfriend provided for her with a home, clothes and gifts, but she had to turn over all her money to him. He began controlling her with physical abuse and isolating her from her family and friends. He then brought other women into their home and pimped them out.

She finally fled after five years.

“When you’re coming out, you almost have to go through deprogramming because you’ve been brainwashed,” she said.

Now recovered, Marino is raising a young family and is deeply involved in her church. She runs an organization called Bags of Hope, which provides toiletries and other essential items to women in need and survivors of sex trafficking. She said she feels a calling to share her story in the hopes that she can help other people.

From sex worker to murder defendant

Millis resident Joli Sparkman traces her own journey into the commercial sex trade to her childhood in upstate New York. Born to a drug-addicted mother and an incarcerated father, Sparkman recalls a rough childhood that included being molested at daycare and going in and out of foster care.

In the mid-1980s, when she was around 14, she was living in Rochester, New York, and befriended an older man who owned a pizzeria. He started giving her free food, then small gifts and money. Gradually, she said, his true character emerged.

“Then later on he would ask me for a favor. He took me to an Italian social club and asked me to dance for his friends,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve been giving you all these things. You have to do this for me.’”

His demands progressed to posing for nude photos for his buddies, which the men threatened to share with her friends if she refused to do what they asked her to do. Eventually, they began driving her to hotels and forcing her to have sex with other men for money.

“They saw a vulnerability factor, and they preyed on that. It really destroyed my soul and made me feel worthless and that things didn’t matter,” she said.

Sparkman eventually fled to Massachusetts, settling in Springfield. By age 23, she was married and had three children, but was trapped in an abusive, violent relationship. When her husband ended up behind bars, Sparkman found herself unable to pay for daycare and rent. As eviction notices piled up, she made a difficult decision.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I went back to what I knew,” she said.

First, she worked in a strip club, then as an escort, sleeping with men for money. By the time her pimp at the escort service took his cut, she said she was barely left with enough to cover her bills.

Her life soon spiraled further out of control, and before long, she found herself convicted of second-degree murder.

Sparkman, who was paroled in 2014, was working as an escort in Springfield in 1997, when prosecutors say she conspired with her pimp and his cousin to rob a third man, Sherwood Gray. Sparkman drove Gray to a preplanned location, where he was fatally shot by the cousin, who mistakenly thought Gray was reaching for a gun.

She and the gunman were convicted of second-degree murder, while her pimp, who she was also dating, was convicted of manslaughter.

A deep sense of shame, she said, led her to lie to police and refuse to cooperate with investigators. Sparkman insists her pimp deceived her into playing a part in the botched deadly robbery.

“When police talked to me, I lied to them,” she said. “When the district attorney asked me what happened, I wouldn’t tell them. I didn’t want them to know what I was doing. I didn’t want them to know about that night, and I didn’t want them to know about my life. I didn’t want them to know I was a prostitute. I was ashamed.”

After serving nearly 18 years at MCI-Framingham, surviving multiple suicide attempts and going through years of intensive therapy, Sparkman says she has found a new purpose in life -- to help others who’ve suffered from sexual exploitation.

“When I was inside, it was very hard for me,” she said. “I had never dealt with any of the stuff I’m talking about now.”

Surviving ‘the circuit’

When Crider was growing up in southern Maine, she lived in a family that struggled with alcoholism and violence. That background, she said, made her vulnerable to predators.

“It started as the guy across the street who wanted to date me,” she recalled. “Before I was old enough to date him, he raped me, and that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy.”

She was just 16. Once the baby was born, she recalled, the man used the child as leverage. With a combination of sweet talk and abuse, he convinced her to start dancing for money, then that gradually escalated into pornographic stage shows and prostitution.

“I turned 18 on stage at an adult book store,” she said. “I believed the dream he sold me that we could have a house and a happy family and have lots of money and travel and do all these things you didn’t get to do when you were growing up. It sounded good to me, coming from where I did, and I bought into the dream.”

Crider said her trafficker worked with a Mafia-affiliated organization, and that following a dispute, she was essentially sold to the mob.

“They moved me away from my family,” she said. “They do that to isolate you from rational voices. Before long, they moved me again. I started working on what’s known as the circuit. It goes all over the country. I started in Maine to Boston, Boston to New York, New York to Chicago, all over the country.”

A mob-connected biker gang then began trafficking her, she said.

Eventually, Crider said, she and her boyfriend became entangled in a conflict between the bikers and the Mafia, and she fled, essentially going into hiding.

Her advice to young victims of trafficking -- “Find an adult you can trust. Find someone who will defend you. Don’t ever believe someone who wants to treat you disrespectfully loves you, no matter how confused you might be about what love is. Don’t believe that’s love.”

NEXT: The third part of the series explores labor and commercial trafficking in Massachusetts, a practice advocates call modern-day slavery.